HEALTH

Disco 2 (Lovepump United, 06.2010)

For: See Below

Byline: The LA noise rocker's second album, Get Color gets the remix treatment on this monolithic, occasionally brilliant, collection of contributions from some of the innovative artists working in electronic music. Originally published on www.inyourspeakers.com. Used by permission from inyourspeakers, LLC.

Please Read Full Review Here.

At its best HEALTH’s second remix album is a peek into the compositional soundness of one of 2009’s best albums, Get Color. That album, with its sheen of post-industrial guitars and atonal blasts of noise punctuating, rather than designing, the group’s songs, gestured towards a greater level of accessibility, and hinted at a band that really wanted to make dance music. DISCO 2 is an exercise in further turning down the caustic dread and repackaging seven out of Get Color’s nine songs (Death+ and We Are Water are curiously left out) into compositions that range from Miami Vice synth-scapes via Javelin to chopped and screwed nü-goth a la Salem.

At its worst DISCO 2 is the aural equivalent of everyone showing up to the office Halloween party all dressed up as the same thing. Eleven contributors, who instead of embracing HEALTH’s noise-barbed explosions, tend to ignore them as tantrums from an ill-tempered child and zero in on the band’s pummeling, frequently insane, percussion. Instead of extrapolating the tonal-rich interplay between the shrieking electronics and pulsar wave guitars, most of the contributors (many of which were part of the Chillwave explosion of 2009), tend to focus on the percussion-heavy elements of Get Color to the exclusion of much else....

....Heavy hitters Tobacco, Pictureplane, and Gold Panda put their own personal stamp on Get Color’s biggest “hit,” “Die Slow”. Tobacco filters “Die Slow’s” industrial luster through his characteristic manic-motorway synth lines that rip ragged holes through the entire composition. He does right by isolating and accentuating the breathy Cocteau Twins-like vocals and trading the songs primitive two-beat thud for more layered, heavily textured percussion. Where Tobacco highlighted “Die Slow’s” vocals, Pictureplane, the Denver purveyor of swampy chillwave, glitches the vocals up, chopping them into indecipherable chunks of Burroughs-esque word-virus and layers them over vaguely tropical beat with a heavy low-end. The albums most anticipated track, Gold Panda’s remix of “Die Slow” is also the most glitched-out, but in a manner more informed by 20th century electronic music. Gold Panda turns HEALTH’s characteristic polyrhythmic drumming on “Before Tigers” into an endlessly sampleable palette of breaks, and then a clinking, clattering percussion line reminiscent of electronic artists on the Kompakt label or Pantha Du Prince’s microhouse groove....

....Blindoldfreak, Salem, and Crystal Castles represent a trifecta of bands who take HEALTH’s din and dread seriously, producing three of the best tracks on the album. Blindoldfreak, guitarist for former HEALTH tour mates, Nine Inch Nails, produces the album’s most minimalist track, full of escalating, pitch-shifted tones and naked, isolated vocals, resulting in one of the most oddly triumphant tracks on the album. Crystal Castles, who are no strangers to HEALTH remixes nor to dance-heavy noise, stick relatively close to the script by layering on tempo-shifted, absolutely bonkers drumming, calming vocals, and a bevy of household/medical found sound. Salem’s remix of “In Violet”, Get Color’s least abrasive track, takes advantage of the song’s surging rhythm, turning it into something dark and sinister, not unlike the repackaging of industrial music that HEALTH succeeded in conquering on Get Color.

HEALTH’s own contribution, the most electronic sounding song of their career, “U.S.A Girls,” is more than worth the price of admission and often, when played in the context of the album, overshadows the rest of the contributions.

Ryan H.

Clipd Beaks

To Realize (01.10, Lovepump United)

For: Bardo Pond, Sweep the Leg Johnny, HEALTH

Byline: Oakland noise-rockers' latest album is a perfectly fuzzed-out triumph of a record. A sprawling metropolis of 70s-inspired drug-fueled jams, rhythm-centric post-punk, and wide-eyed experimentation in both form and function. Originally published on www.inyourspeakers.com. Used by permission from In Your Speakers, LLC.

Clipd Beaks claim that To Realize is “a tribute to love, to moving forward, to rejecting doom.” This is a head-scratching claim given the claustrophobic, frequently caustic moments of violence that erupt across the album's 11 tracks. Hailing from Oakland, Clipd Beaks layer disorienting, swirling drones over tight, sinister grooves and frantic tribal drumming. Their lyrics, delivered in a scratchy caterwaul, paint broad strokes of surrealistic imagery like “screaming reptiles” and “clouds that become mushrooms”. It would seem this laundry list of nihilistic elements would render the Beak’s earlier claim null. I mean, where does “murdering the apocalypse” fit into love, moving forward, and rejecting doom? How does that line amount to more than vapid, posturing, word-vomit of two very dire things? To answer these questions we can fall back onto the old form vs. functionality argument. The form (i.e. heavily rhythmic post-punk married with churning, dark, psychedelic drones) seemingly defies the function (i.e. the cathartic release that comes from pushing your deepest fears, regrets, disgusts through your speakers into the air through performance). But it is through these seemingly incongruous elements that any catharsis is achieved. How can we move past a world full of depleting resources and a sense of doom gnawing on our once glowing optimism without confronting them head on? Even though To Realize dwells on the negative aspects of life it is only to take ownership of them, embody them for a time, and then move past them. This is achieved surprisingly well on their third release, and first for the(awesome) Lovepump United label, as form and functionality, while seemingly at odds, come together for a triumphant release. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this on my best of list in December 2010.

Like most post-punk bands the rhythm section dictates the mood and direction of the song. To Realize is no exception. “Visions” push the drum-circle like percussion to the forefront, creating buckling, hypnotic beats that fall all over themselves as the song jerks along. “Blood” takes on a minimalist interplay between a brooding bassline, skittering tom hits, and a primitive 2-beat progression. “Desert Highway Music” uses a similar concept of a driving bassline and minimalist drumming, but underneath is a buzzing, oscillating drone that runs circles around your headphones. Every song benefits greatly from the rhythm section being both the backbone and the driving agent. This rhythm-centric approach is not unlike post-punk legends This Heat or L.A drum-n-shout trio Foot Village.

Instrumentation comes in scathing waves on To Realize. These attacks on the senses borrow such atonal sensibilities from No Wave luminaries DNA and Mars to recent unclassifiable juggernauts, Sightings. The addition of squealing, bleating saxophones and trumpets on “Atoms” and “Jamn” seem apropos for this kind of instrumental expressionism. Finding a center to Clipd Beaks is a slippery thing to do. Dig deeper and you find another layer of reverb on top of the guitar, more slightly off beat drum hits, and the aural glue that keeps it all together, those hazy, buzzing drones. These tonal freak-outs, however, never lose track of themselves, the rhythm section is tight as a drum and keeps even the most viscous of free form exploration and druggy drones on a straightforward trajectory.

Probably the most pleasant surprise is that on an album so dedicated to tonal and textural exploration, Clipd Beaks songwriting is pretty top notch. The vocals take on a grating 90s grunge quality Layne Staley would approve of. The most readily accessible example of this is the first single off of To Realize, “Visions” which starts out, “Try to Believe/In Desperate Moments/When clouds become mushrooms/and statues that bleed.” If you think this surreal imagery would inspire a really cool, creepy literal music video, you are right. It is a good songwriter that makes the intangibles seem quite literal. It is refreshing to hear something as formulaic as grunge re-contextualized into something weird and par-for-the-course of late 2000’s experimental music.

To Realize is a perfectly fuzzed out triumph of a record. A sprawling metropolis of 70s-inspired drug-fueled jams, rhythm-centric post-punk, and wide-eyed experimentation in both form and function. Clipd Beaks are hard to resist and if there is any justice in 2010 they will be even harder to miss.

Ryan H.

HEALTH

Get Color (09.09, Lovepump United)

For: A Place to Bury Strangers, Abe Vigoda, Jesu

Byline: HEALTH flirts with late 80’s industrial sheen in 2007. Marries it in 2009. GET COLOR is their Noise-Industrial-pop love child.

Originally published on www.inyourspeakers.com Used by permission from
In Your Speakers Media LLC

As a year in music 2009 has seen two distinct trends. The first, and most rewarding, has been established bands reaching the pinnacle of their career by making epoch defining albums i.e Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Dirty projectors. The second has been established bands making albums that fit consistently in their oeuvre both thematically and sonically, not really breaking new ground here, just churning out more consistent records (The Thermals, Yo La Tengo). What 2009 hasn’t seen a lot of are albums like “GET COLOR” by HEALTH.

The first 30 seconds of the single “Die Slow” had me checking wikipedia and running through “Crimewave” to make sure this was the same band. Perhaps this is a little dramatic but the sentiment remains the same. The song starts out with a processed guitar loop which seemed like familiar territory for a band that runs so many distortion pedals their stage floor looks like a whack-a-mole game. When the percussion kicks in all bets are off. A stuttering post-industrial backbeat comes in before androgynous, almost feminine vocals coming floating up from a Mariana trench of pure loudness. The chugging guitar riff sounds eerily similar to Stabbing Westward (I had to reach back to middle school for that reference.) This overtly shining layer of studio sweetness over unrestrained noise seemed like a brilliant, brilliant move.

It is easy to say that HEALTH has “changed” their sound since 2007’s blitzberg of brutal noise processed in loud, short punches to face. It is more apt to say that HEALTH has evolved into this menagerie of thick Industrial percussion, shoegazy guitars and vocals punctuated with HEALTH-associated standards such as massive bursts of violent noise and tribal drumming. Each song retains beloved elements that made HEALTH’s self titled album such an amazing feat of precision terror mixed with pop tendencies. For example “Severin” is the most straight ahead HEALTH track on the album starting from the very first second with ear splitting guitar feedback and frantic drumming, but sadly in an album full of completely new sounding tracks it sounds a little out of place. I feel strange using the adjective “beautiful” in a review of a HEALTH album but it feels so right. Like Post-Metal pioneers Isis, HEALTH cloaks shimmering layered soundscapes beneath the threatening auspices of noise; the knowledge that at any moment this pretty little breakdown full of vocal cooing, shimmering guitars and tribal drumming can be obliterated by the next ejaculation of noise makes you appreciate it even more.

There are some downright pretty songs on this album. “Before Tigers” and “In Violet” are lost in a hazy, daydream of skittering electronic percussion, weird, processed guitar lines coming in from all angles. Located respectively in both the middle and the end of the album you can tell HEALTH has learned something about mixing album. Sometimes it is nice to let an album breathe. At times they sound closer to fellow NIN tour alumni Deerhunter than (amazing) label mates Pre.

The decidedly industrial approach that “GET COLOR” has taken is a genre that is criminally dismissed. With bands like HEALTH, Jesu and A Place to Bury Strangers (whose 2009 album rivals HEALTH for one of the loudest) channeling early Nine Inch Nails and Throbbing Gristle, is a Post-Industrial revival on the horizon? “GET COLOR” is a small victory for HEALTH, the amazing Lovepump United, and the post-everything noise genre.

Ryan H.

HEALTH Myspace